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Aurornis
WhereIsTheTruth
To me this sounds like they couldn't get juicy deals and a referral program like they do for all the other fishy AVs
I mean.. take a look at their home page: https://www.safetydetectives.com/
justinclift
Oh wow. Yeah, that place is pretty fucking bad:
Quick summary of the best antivirus software for 2023:
1. Norton — Best overall antivirus in 2023.
2. Bitdefender — Best for lightweight scanning (with heaps of extra features).
3. TotalAV — Best for ease of use (recommended for beginners).
4. McAfee — Best for web protection (with a great family plan).
5. Intego — Best for protecting your Mac.
martin8412
That's the same story with all product comparison sites. It's obvious that in most cases, they've never actually used the product for more than some hours if at all. The description of the products are just a rewritten version of the manufacturer sales material.
The only way to get somewhat reliable recommendations was to append reddit to the search terms.
COMMENT___
> recommended for beginners
This is fabulous. They even draw a "learning path" from beginner to expert (sorry, who?). It looks almost natural for inexperienced users.
This whole "home antivirus" business reminds me of SoftRAM. It's just a few steps away from being a scam.
mavhc
Which is why they don't like Defender. "We tested Defender against 1000 viruses, and it detected less than Norton", never says how much less.
Also it's not a VPN apparently.
tester756
lol this list is crazy
wasn't ESET always ahead of those?
eur0pa
Try and move the pointer out of the page and a "Time-limited deal" for Norton pops up. This website is trash.
xela79
best windows AV/Malware and Defender is not on the list. How serious can you take such a site/resource.
KennyBlanken
Yeah. "The company has earned certifications from data privacy advisors like TrustArc" feels like a reference who emails back "I can confirm Bob worked for us from August of 2010 to July of 2012." Trustarc is about box-checking compliance.
Also "works closely with other privacy experts"...like who?
Eisenstein
Let me open up MS Paint and get a certificate printed out, then I will be a Privacy Expert too.
3np
I think that's supposed to be a quote from reader mail, to which the OP is a response.
downrightmike
If you've used Avast or AVG in the past decade, they sold your click data for every thing you clicked on and every site you went to. I hadn't heard about this at all until today. Submitting for exposure.
type0
The trouble is that people don't care, I explained it to both AVG and Avast users, the response I got varied from disbelief to asking me where is my tinfoil-hat. Ignorance is bliss
JohnFen
That doesn't sound like they don't care as much as they don't believe you.
Which echoes the responses I get when I bring up these issues. I think lots of people find the concept so outrageous that they think it couldn't possibly be true.
hutzlibu
I think it is not wanting to believe.
t0bia_s
My friends family use Avast on all devices at home. It blocks ads and give parental control, also security from various viruses, phishing, malware... Data tracking is fine for them.
But... They pay around 35$/month for this.
xen2xen1
No shit moment right there. The second I saw they had their own toolbar I was 100% done, as it was totally, mind numbingly obvious they'd gone to the dark side. Anyone surprised by this is daft.
HappyPanacea
Wow I have used AVG for like 13 years and never even heard these allegations before although I'm plenty online. I saw the AVG email signature and disabled the web/email part of AVG. I should have realized that a company which does that will do other underhanded acts.
Grazester
I stopped using them and Avast about 15 years now. They started to get dodgy and Window defender was more than good enough.
jcranmer
I mean, it's standard practice for me to disable all the parts of the AV that are "let us infect^H^H^H^H^H^H protect your other programs" because, well, it's effectively infecting the other programs from their perspective.
goodbyesf
I stopped using avast years ago when I first encountered the phrase: 'if it is free, then you are the product'.
Also, avast, avg, etc are just another source of vulnerabilities themselves.
Everyone really should be taught in school to ask: 'how do they profit off of me?'.
skjoldr
In security space companies can profit from selling corporate products backed by a threat-detecting network of free personal users. The sooner they can see new malware, the sooner they can make and distribute its signature, the safer it is for their corporate clients, so everyone wins.
codetrotter
> they sold your click data for every thing you clicked on and every site you went to
It’s like Batman said. You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.
Eisenstein
Or you start as a villain and just play a hero until you get found out.
readyplayernull
And Windows 11 took their place, waiting for the report in another 10 years...
caminante
To me, the browser/email signature bloatware was more offensive than selling my privacy.
saagarjha
> Avast and AVG no longer pose a threat to user privacy, meaning both products are 100% safe to use. Since closing down its data-aggregating subsidary, Jumpshot, Avast has undergone significant changes to ensure user privacy isn’t compromised. The company has earned certifications from data privacy advisors like TrustArc and works closely with other privacy experts, so you can rely on Avast and AVG to responsibly manage your data.
…is this meant to be sarcasm, or what?
dboreham
Message from our lawyers.
danparsonson
Fool me twice...
sysstemlord
It says in the article that once Avast was exposed they moved the Spyware from the toolbar to the main program and claimed everything is ok now, so in this case it's fool me thrice...
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Eisenstein
I wish the past twenty years hadn't been a futile effort of me and many others trying to convince people that they should care about privacy and their personal data even if they were 'nobody' or 'not doing anything wrong' or 'anonymously collected' or even if they thought 'there is nothing we can do about it', all the while coming across as paranoid or up to no good. Meanwhile I was right but fat good that does because the time to have done something impactful would have been 20 or so years ago and with a critical mass effort.
There has to be a term for humanity's tendency towards shrugging things off as unimportant until it becomes too late to do anything about it, and then getting really pissed off that nobody warned them enough.
imiric
It's difficult to argue against "free". The originally open spirit of the internet has been corrupted by companies who offer their services for "free", while in actuality it's done in exchange for the gold mine that is user data. Even if this is clarified, it's buried in the fine legalese of the T&S. And even if people read it, most will choose to make this exchange because they're already used to things being "free" online, because of the value of the service, and because it's never clarified how much their data is actually worth. The reality is that user data is exchanged in perpetuity on the data broker market, and the value extracted from it far exceeds the value of the service itself. Even paid services will harvest user data just because the profits from selling it exceed what they can realistically charge customers. All companies using this model should be paying users to use their service instead.
This is an insidious and downright evil business model, fueled primarily by advertising.
bruce343434
The term "Cassandra Syndrome" or "Cassandra Complex" is used to describe situations where individuals or groups make valid warnings or predictions about future disasters or problems, but are ignored or not taken seriously until it's too late.
RcouF1uZ4gsC
For at least the last decade, at least for consumers, any type of anti-virus such as Norton, Avast, AVG had more downside that upside. Avoiding running under an admin account and using Windows Defender was better than installing any third-party anti-virus solution.
rileymat2
That is not entirely true, for ransomware your permissions are enough for them to encrypt your files. Windows defender is getting there, but I am not sure it is quite there.
nfriedly
I'm with the grandparent here, but want to chime in that backups are also important. If all my files got encrypted, I'd only be out a couple of days time.
TillE
Smart ransomware will wait weeks or months before revealing itself. So you'll have been backing up a lot of encrypted documents, and your last clean backup may be quite old. It may be totally gone if you're rotating quickly.
But I essentially agree that Windows Defender is about as good as it gets. It's not perfect protection, but neither is any other product.
zokier
MS Defender is not any different from any other AV products and it definitely has its share of issues; one of the reasons to get some other AV is just to get rid of Defender.
kd913
Ms makes Windows. By using the OS you already trust them with your data. Why bother with a 3rd party here?
If you don’t trust MS Defender, you should be using Linux instead.
tredre3
MS Defender has issues but it never did any of the bad things third party AVs do. In fact it does none of the things this very article highlights.
So yes, MS Defender is very different from any other AD products.
hutzlibu
It still sends lots and lots of data home. The only difference is we don't know, if Microsoft is selling them. They surely are not selling them openly, but I would not be that surprised to find out they use it for other purposes as well. But they openly do tracking and show you ads in windows anyway ..
musicale
If this is legal we need better laws.
If it is illegal then the laws need better enforcement.
zokier
it is illegal and it is being enforced
https://www.techradar.com/news/avast-hit-with-multimillion-e...
Eisenstein
Being enforced after it is too late to do anything about it. The people that did it made their money and the data is long ago sold.
cortesoft
How do you suggest it be enforced prior to it happening?
dancemethis
> Avast and AVG no longer pose a threat to user privacy, meaning both products are 100% safe to use.
They are still proprietary. They definitely do pose a threat.
JohnTHaller
Avast also made money by tricking users into installing Google Chrome for years using dark patterns: https://imgur.com/gallery/WWZxj
impulser_
Do you even need these anymore? Why are people still using 3rd party anti-virus software?
RadiozRadioz
Because they're not part of the HN bubble and genuinely do need an additional program to stop them downloading random infected crap from MediaFire banner ads.
The amount of people who would open funnycat.jpg.exe is much larger than you think. No way are they reading Windows Defender popups with complicated words like "executable", they're gonna click okay and it's up to 3rd party virus protectors to stop that stuff with scary flashy warning popups.
chx
> No way are they reading Windows Defender popups with complicated words like "executable", they're gonna click okay
Indeed. https://i.imgur.com/M4RNUHl.png from https://www.usenix.org/conference/enigma2016/conference-prog...
tentacleuno
I use BitDefender, not because I'm an idiot as you implied, but simply because according to my research it's more efficient and catches more threats than Windows Defender.
dgellow
Look, Lambda people subscribe to VPNs because YouTubers convinced them it’s the only way to be safe online, even if that’s an absurd claim. Antivirus companies have a similar business model.
rightbyte
When Win 95 and 98 was a thing antivirus programs were broadly recommended to normal users. I guess the habit lingers?
KnobbleMcKnees
It is basically this. Windows has long since had an integrated firewall and system protection measures, including a file scanner. And back in the 95/98 days, browsers we're happy to let you execute virtually native code that could wreak all sorts of havoc (ActiveX, Flash, etc.)
Nowadays anti viruses are kind of like big intimidating security signs. They make the owner feel a sense of comfort while offering a bare minimum of value in terms of real security.
soraminazuki
> They make the owner feel a sense of comfort while offering a bare minimum of value in terms of real security.
If only they provided a bare minimum value, because it's worse than that. Anti-viruses make the system horribly insecure, with their poorly written C/C++ programs running everything needlessly as root and parsing every data within its reach [1]. If that's not enough, they even tamper with browsers and interfere with genuine efforts to improve security [2].
Anti-viruses are scams that decrease security, with the possible exception of ClamAV. The whole concept is bad too. Installing some magic software can never make security threats go away.
[1]: https://ia801306.us.archive.org/26/items/SyScanArchiveInfoco...
[2]: https://robert.ocallahan.org/2017/01/disable-your-antivirus-...
sremani
Having an actual virus was less tax on the system than having Avast and AVG.
wildekek
The real money was in hedge funds using this data to beat the market. People got filthy rich this way.
esafak
Was this covered in the news?
berkle4455
Joseph Cox at Vice covered it fairly extensively. Hedge funds are still doing it today, just with different data vendors.
tedajax
Antivirus software is universally a scam so not a surprise at all.
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> Avast and AVG no longer pose a threat to user privacy, meaning both products are 100% safe to use. Since closing down its data-aggregating subsidary, Jumpshot, Avast has undergone significant changes to ensure user privacy isn’t compromised. The company has earned certifications from data privacy advisors like TrustArc and works closely with other privacy experts, so you can rely on Avast and AVG to responsibly manage your data.
This looks to me like the kind of language that gets included in an article after lawyers start threatening lawsuits.
Something tells me the author didn’t really want to lead this article with a blurb about how the products are 100% safe to use.